Iran launched an attack on Israel using at least dozens of explosive one-way attack drones, likely Shaheds, earlier on Saturday, Axios reported, although the drones would still take hours to travel from their launch point to targets in Israel. It was unclear how many drones U.S. troops shot down or where the interceptions took place, and efforts to defend Israel from oncoming aerial attacks are ongoing, the defense official confirmed.

“U.S. forces in the region continue to shoot down Iranian-launched drones targeting Israel,” the defense official said. “Our forces remain postured to provide additional defensive support and to protect U.S. forces operating in the region.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also claimed to have fired cruise missiles at targets in Israel, according to Axios. Israel, the U.S. and partners strategized to take down as many as possible before they entered Israeli airspace.

Iran threatened to retaliate against U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East if the Biden administration intervened in defense of Israel ahead of or during an attack. On Friday, the U.S. moved new military assets to the region to bolster deterrence and prepare for any contingencies that might require a military response, a defense official told the DCNF.

First visual sight of an Iranian attack drone over southern Iraq, headed towards Israel.

Appears to be a Shahed-136, used heavily by the Russians against Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/WXUQVzn3uj

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) April 13, 2024

The White House National Security Council confirmed late Saturday afternoon that Iran had begun an “airborne attack” against Israel, according to a statement. Biden was being briefed regularly on the situation and maintaining communication with Israeli leaders as well as other countries.

“This attack is likely to unfold over a number of hours. President Biden has been clear: our support for Israel’s security is ironclad,” the statement read.

Tehran, via its Mission to the United Nations, claimed its military response to Israel had been completed.

“Conducted on the strength of Article 51 of the UN Charter pertaining to legitimate defense, Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus. The matter can be deemed concluded,” the statement read.

“However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe. It is a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. MUST STAY AWAY!,” it continued.

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The explosive-laden drone originated from somewhere in Iraq and exploded near the living quarters of Jordan’s Tower 22 base near the Syrian border, killing three U.S. troops and injuring at least 34, mostly reservists. About 90 minutes later, an enemy drone targeted the al-Tanf Garrison nearby in Syria, according to the DOD official and another U.S. official, Politico reported. But a U.S. counter-drone unmanned aerial system, Raytheon’s Coyote, shot it down, the DOD official said.

Tower 22 and the al-Tanf garrison are just miles apart. U.S. drones sometimes defend both, the U.S. official said, according to Politico.

Iran-backed militants saw an “opportunity” and “exploited” it, the DOD official told Politico, speaking anonymously to discuss the still-developing situation.

It was initially unclear how air defenses on base failed to shoot down the drone, and the Pentagon is still assessing the circumstances surrounding the incident. U.S. troops based in Iraq and Syria — and now Jordan for the first time — have faced rocket, drone and missile attacks more than 160 times since Oct. 17.

Troops on base may have confused the enemy drone closing in with a U.S. drone that was returning to base close to the same time, The Wall Street Journal first reported, citing U.S. officials. However, Politico’s response suggests the simultaneous arrival allowed the enemy drone to conceal itself from U.S. detection.

The drone originated in Iraq, according to the WSJ. So far, the U.S. doesn’t have proof that Iran directed the attack, a U.S. official told the outlet, and Tehran has denied any official involvement.

The attack signified a major escalation, resulting for the first time in U.S. service members killed. A Dec. 25 attack on a base in Iraq critically wounded a service member, who is recovering in the hospital and at least 70 U.S. troops had sustained minor or concussive wounds prior to Sunday.

President Joe Biden faces mounting pressure to respond to Sunday’s attack, according to Politico.

Biden called the attack “despicable and wholly unjust.”

“Three U.S. service members were killed — and many wounded — during an unmanned aerial drone attack on our forces stationed in northeast Jordan near the Syria border,” Biden said. “While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq.”

Biden vowed to retaliate for the loss of these three service members.

“We will carry on their commitment to fight terrorism,” he said. “And have no doubt — we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing.”

U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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(DCNF)—The U.S. military is already overstretched in responding to global threats and too weak to deal with the most pressing challenges to U.S. national security, according to a report released by a conservative think tank on Wednesday.

The Heritage Foundation’s 2024 Index of U.S. Military Strength functions as a report card for the progress of the U.S. military relative to the global operating environment and adversaries’ capabilities and rated the military overall as “weak,” editor and retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Dakota Wood told the Daily Caller News Foundation. In 2023, wars in Ukraine and Israel, compounded with the U.S. response to conflict exploding throughout the Middle East, put the U.S. military in a spotlight, demonstrating deficiencies in U.S. ammunition and weapons stockpiles and the ability to answer the president’s call to intervene simultaneously in more than one crisis.

“As currently postured, the U.S. military is at significant risk of not being able to defend America’s vital national interests,” the introduction to the index reads. The U.S. military received a “weak” rating for the second year in a row “relative to the force needed to defend national interests on a global stage against actual challenges in the world as it is rather than as we wish it were,” it added.

Overall, all branches of the armed services, as well as U.S. nuclear and missile defense assets, are too old, too weak and too unready, Wood, Heritage’s senior research fellow for defense programs, told the DCNF at a briefing ahead of the report’s formal release.

Heritage blamed the Pentagon’s decision to keep forces deployed for longer than planned, lack of funds, poor discipline in developing and procuring weapons programs, and constantly shifting priorities and policies for driving the decline in U.S. military strength.

“When we say that the U.S. military is weak, it’s not an indictment of the individuals,” the men and women in service, Wood explained. “If you had to go up against Russia or China or Iran or some other actor in the world, you’re just not going to have a sufficient amount of military power to go out.”

The overall rating isn’t a change from last year, but U.S. nuclear forces received a downgrade from 2023 in the 2024 report.

Heritage rated the Army as “marginal,” the Navy as “weak”” and the Air Force as “very weak.” Only the Marine Corps came out as strong, thanks to its monumental modernization efforts focused on a worst-case-scenario fight with China, according to Wood, but it remains too small to accomplish the missions the Pentagon tasked it with in the previous year.

The Air Force fared worst of all, receiving a “very weak” rating. Besotted with a pilot shortage, it operates just 75% of the ready fighter aircraft needed to devote to two major conflicts at once, according to the report. Pilots also aren’t getting enough hours in the cockpit — less than 130 each year on average, which in the Cold War era would have rendered them combat ineffective, Wood told the DCNF.

“There is not a fighter squadron in the Air Force that holds the readiness levels, competence, and confidence levels that are required to square off against a peer competitor,” the report stated.

The relatively young Space Force rated as “marginal,” reflecting a lack of personnel and satellite constellations that have exceeded their life cycles.

U.S. nuclear forces are “ancient,” Wood told the DCNF, while one of the most important modernization programs, replacing Cold War-era Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, has encountered financial difficulties requiring secretary of defense intervention to save it from termination.

“Nearly all components of the nuclear enterprise are at a tipping point with respect to replacement or modernization,” the report read.

Wood highlighted this as an area of particular concern. All other U.S. military operations depend on a strong nuclear deterrent to prevent catastrophic nuclear escalation from peer threats like China.

In the 2024 Index of U.S. Military Strength, U.S. military power is characterized as Weak. #defense https://t.co/E8u0HR6yjd pic.twitter.com/cff3kd7pDS

— Heritage DataViz (@HeritageDataViz) January 24, 2024

The Army is now the smallest on record since before World War II at a time when many warn the U.S. is in a more dangerous place than any time since, Wood said. In 2023 it fielded 452,000 active duty soldiers, and that number will drop to 445,000 — down from 770,000 since the end of the Cold War.

It’s too small to respond to more than one major regional conflict at a time and continues to shrink, while the weapons systems that make up the cornerstone of Army capabilities are rapidly aging out, according to Wood.

M1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks, for example, began development in the 1960’s. As they get older, the cost to maintain and service the equipment only grows, but the Army doesn’t have a plan to replace them until the 2050’s, Wood said.

The index is “not a futures document,” Wood told the DCNF. It looks at the present force and matches it with the ways a more diverse set of threats in a more complicated world could threaten the U.S. security.

Although the U.S. military is preparing to deter and if necessary prosecute a fight with China, unexpected events can trigger a U.S. response at any time, Wood said. Developments in the Middle East, including the Houthi rebel group in Yemen effectively blockading Red Sea shipping, have disrupted U.S. Navy deployments.

The Navy received a rating of “weak.”

On a tactical level, it has performed fairly well in shooting down Houthi missiles and drones launched at commercial shipping and mounting counterattacks on Houthi capabilities on land, Wood said. However, it is striving, and struggling, to maintain a global presence with a fleet half the size of what commanders say they need, leading to stress on the platforms and personnel.

The USS Bataan amphibious ready group (ARG) and 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed to the Middle East in July to patrol the Persian Gulf. It was since reassigned to the Mediterranean Sea to bolster the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier providing deterrence against other actors cashing in on Israel’s war with Hamas, as the Ford’s deployment had been extended multiple times, Politico reported.

The Boxer ARG was scheduled to replace the Bataan in November, but has been held up in San Diego, California, as it undergoes additional training exercises, according to Politico. The Navy has been circumspect regarding the Boxer’s condition, and officials say the ship could remain on deployment “indefinitely.”

Among the military branches, only the Marine Corps is characterized as Strong overall. The Army is Marginal, the Navy is Weak, and the Air Force is Very Weak. #defense #army #navy #airforce #usmc https://t.co/E8u0HR768L pic.twitter.com/kO5D0mKCiS

— Heritage DataViz (@HeritageDataViz) January 24, 2024

Time is growing short to reevaluate U.S. spending priorities, experts, speaking at a panel after the index’s unveiling, warned.

Military equipment has become exponentially more expensive relative to increases in defense spending, even adjusted for inflation, according to Wood.

Defense budgets have not kept pace with inflation and are inadequate to replace, upgrade and expand the U.S. military, according to the report. The U.S. defense budget increased 3.5% between 2023 and 2024, while inflation increased 8%.

“If we now get super real, this is not just about recognizing the threat,” Elbridge Colby, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, said on a Heritage panel Wednesday. “We have to reevaluate like a business that’s about to go bankrupt.”

The Pentagon did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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As questions swirl over whether Austin deliberately secluded his cancer diagnosis and hospitalization due to complications from the earlier medical procedure, a recording obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation revealed the aide asked the ambulance to avoid attracting attention. An internal review is ongoing into the breakdown in communication following Jan. 1, but the Pentagon on Wednesday could not confirm whether that review would be disclosed to the public.

“Again, as I highlighted, we’re conducting a review. The secretary has publicly come out and taking responsibility in terms of the need to do better — in terms of transparency as it relates to his medical treatment. So I’ll just leave it there,” Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a briefing Wednesday afternoon.

Recording of the call, which took place at 7:11 p.m. on Jan. 1 and was obtained by the DCNF via a Freedom of Information Act request, is mostly redacted. In it, an unnamed aid to Austin asks the dispatcher if the ambulance coming to pick up Austin from his residence in Virginia would dim lights and mute sirens.

“Can the ambulance not show up with lights and sirens? Um, we’re trying to remain a little subtle,” the aide says.

The dispatcher explains that it’s standard procedure to reduce lights and alarms inside residential areas, but that the emergency services department is required by law to run the flashing lights and sirens on main roads, citing Georgetown Pike and Leesburg Pike.

The Pentagon would not say on Wednesday if Austin requested the aide to press for the low-profile transit or if his security team or staff came up with the idea on their own. Austin maintains 24/7 security and staff support, Ryder said.

The 911 call was first reported by The Daily Beast.

I want to thank the doctors and nursing staff at Walter Reed for their professionalism and superb support during my stay. Now, as I continue to recuperate and perform my duties from home, I’m eager to fully recover and return as quickly as possible to the Pentagon.…

— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) January 15, 2024

The Pentagon announced plans on Jan. 9 to conduct a 30-day internal investigation into the circumstances surrounding Austin’s disappearance, focusing on identifying whether officials lapsed in communicating when and how the secretary delegated responsibilities, Kelley Magsamen, Austin’s chief of staff, said in a memo. Austin’s second-in-command, Deputy Secretary 0f Defense Kathleen Hicks, had carried out some routine duties on his behalf while on vacation in Puerto Rico, seemingly without knowing that her boss was out of commission.

“This review will help to ensure clarity and transparency when a determination has been made that certain authorities have been transferred, and that proper and timely notification has been made to the President and White House and, as appropriate, the United States Congress and the American public,” Magsamen wrote.

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The Houthis have launched at least 27 drone and missile attacks against commercial vessels transiting near the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the U.S. military said Thursday, operations the group says come in opposition to Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza. U.S. and U.K. military assets, with assistance from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands, struck “a number of targets” in Yemen early morning Friday Sana’a time, the White House said, and is the first time the U.S. has conducted deliberate strikes against targets linked to the Houthis since the group began attacking international shipping in late 2023.

“These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea—including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history,” President Joe Biden said in the statement.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was preparing earlier to authorize strikes on the Houthis following a meeting with the National Security Council and briefings with Parliament, according to The Financial Times. The Pentagon had already drawn up potential targets, U.S. officials told the outlet.

The strikes involved fighter jets and ships and submarines firing Tomahawk missiles, CNN reported, citing U.S. and U.K. officials. The coalition targeted Houthis’ drone, ballistic and cruise missile, and coastal radar and air surveillance capabilities, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement.

“If necessary, we will take follow-on actions to protect U.S. forces,” Austin said.

Houthi forces had bunkered down forces and took steps to conceal sensitive assets in anticipation of strikes, U.S. officials said, The Wall Street Journal reported. Earlier on Thursday, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi threatened to retaliate if struck by the U.S., the BBC reported.

“Any American attack will not remain without a response. The response will be greater than the attack that was carried out with twenty drones and a number of missiles,” he said in a televised address, referring to a Wednesday attack local time that was the largest since the group began targeting commercial ships in October.

The U.K. operates a destroyer in the Red Sea and is participating in a U.S.-led coalition, Operation Prosperity Guardian, which is aimed at deterring strikes and reassuring international shipping of the vessels’ safety.

The Pentagon previously declined to comment on rumored plans of strikes on the Houthis earlier Thursday.

: Sailors from guided-missile destroyer USS Mason (DDG 87) participate in a vertical replenishment with @TheCVN69 while supporting Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea, Jan. 8. Led by @CMF_Bahrain's CTF 153, #OPG has more than 20 countries taking part. pic.twitter.com/m9AMaLsoWF

— U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. 5th Fleet (@US5thFleet) January 11, 2024

After Wednesday’s missile and drone barrage, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) reiterated a Jan. 3 warning from the U.S. and partners against the Houthis launching further attacks. Experts said the repeated threat signaled the Pentagon was rapidly losing patience with the Houthis’ insistence on continued attacks.

“I think that statement from multiple nations when it comes to the fact that there will be consequences – should the attacks not stop – speaks for itself. And I’ll just leave it at that,” Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a press briefing Thursday afternoon.

Major shipping companies continue to avoid Red Sea transit routes. The Houthis over the weekend appeared to target one of the U.S. guided-missile destroyers operating in the region as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian.

U.S. military assets in the Red Sea include 130 aircraft and the warships assigned to the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, carrying about 4,000 sailors and Marines, White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said at a Jan. 3 press briefing.

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The course description for HE 374, Topics In Gender & Sexuality in Literature, begins by tracing the history of gender and sexuality studies from its origin in the women’s studies discipline rooted in the Second Wave Feminism of the 1970’s and 1980’s, according to a syllabus the DCNF obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. However, the English major course broadens to include studies for future U.S. Navy officers on LGBTQ studies, race, class and concepts informed by Critical Race Theory, which defines people groups in terms of oppressor and oppressed, the syllabus shows.

“Most of the faculty, students, and topics of study in early Women’s Studies programs were limited by being White, middleclass, women,” the female instructor, whose name is redacted but who appears to have served as Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences during that semester, wrote in the course description.

“In the 2000’s, some Women’s Studies Departments renamed themselves Gender and Sexuality Studies in order to better reflect Women’s Studies’ growing interest in exploring Queer Theory, Masculinity Studies, Intersectionality, race, and class. Women’s Studies Programs are feminist at their hearts; Gender and Sexuality Studies Programs are not, and in fact, might even reject feminism for its original focus on White middleclass women.”

Students begin the class by performing a land acknowledgement, the syllabus shows. Students also set the learning outcomes for the course.

The second class period involve study of “theories of gender” and learning about the Genderbread person, a visual made to show a difference between “gender identity,” “gender expression,” “anatomical sex,” “gender” and “sexual orientation.” On the third class period, students create a diversity statement and learn gender and sexuality vocabulary.

Another in-class activity scheduled for week 3 is reading pan-African and socialist civil rights activist W.E.B. DeBois’ “Double Consciousness.”

The primary texts of the course were “The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender” by Nancy Chodorow and “Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory” by Toril Moi. Both books are critical of conservative ideas about sex and gender.

“Women’s mothering perpetuates itself through social-structurally induced psychological mechanisms. It is not an unmediated product of physiology. Women come to mother because they have been mothered by women,” Chodorow wrote, according to a summary.

Moi’s book imagines a world “beyond the opposition feminine/masculine, beyond homosexuality and heterosexuality,” a review shows.

“While you will be expected to understand both of these books and the theoretical positions they present, you are not expected to agree with them (although you might, and that’s okay too),” the instructor wrote in the syllabus.

Two papers due throughout the semester require students to apply concepts from the two books to other readings from the class. The final paper instructs students to describe their takeaways about gender and sexuality from the class.

Journal entries on the Tacit Racism reading are also required most Wednesdays, according to the syllabus.

Students are also required to respond to articles critiquing “The Passion” by Jeanette Winterson and “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic” by Alison Bechdel. “Fun Home” is a memoir about a girl coming to terms with her own lesbian sexuality, according to a summary.

The syllabus is not dated. However, the dates on the syllabus correspond to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule that fits the fall of 2021.

“The Naval Academy focuses on respect and inclusion of people of all backgrounds in order to develop well-rounded future leaders in the Navy and Marine Corps,” the academy said in a statement to the DCNF, adding that the course is optional.

“A vast array of intellectual ideas, approaches and theories are mentioned during classroom discussions. The Naval Academy educates midshipmen to be critical thinkers who can analyze issues from multiple perspectives and contexts; our focus is on how to think, not what to think,” the academy said.

The FY24 NDAA prohibits funding for CRT and GUTS Biden's DEI bureaucracy. pic.twitter.com/qKZ1BPo2bK

— Armed Services GOP (@HASCRepublicans) December 12, 2023

The DCNF also obtained syllabi for the spring and fall semesters of 2023 as part of the FOIA request.

The Spring 2023 course was divided into three main sections, starting with “an exploration of the masculine/feminine binary,” then moving to “a historical and contemporary discussion of the rejection and empowerment of specific sexualities” and finally the “utilization of Gender and Sexuality to enforce or deconstruct the othering of nonwestern culture,” the syllabus showed.

“This course promises… [to] create a welcoming space for discussion and practice of vocabulary in relation to Gender and Sexuality,” the syllabus states.

The Naval Academy sought a tenure-track assistant professor in Gender and Sexuality Studies to begin work in January 2024, the website shows.

“We welcome subspecialties in disability studies, film, and multiethnic or global Anglophone literature,” the job description stated.

A course description for the class available on the academy’s website advertises students will learn “advanced methods of analyzing literature and culture are taught through a set of focused readings of theories, histories, perspectives, and/or major figures in LGBTQ, women’s and/or gender studies,” including Audre Lorde, Sarah Ahmed, Gloria Anzaldua — who described herself as a “Chicana dyke-feminist” — and Kimberle Crenshaw, a Critical Race Theory scholar.

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Groups composed of U.S. military veterans, often former special operators, jumped in to help ferry Afghan allies out of Afghanistan after seeing that the Biden administration abandoned thousands during the country’s collapse to the Taliban. After successive crises leaving Americans stranded in conflict zones — in Ukraine, Sudan and now Israel — these groups have come to fill in gaps where the U.S. government lacks the resources, authorities or will to step in and bring U.S. citizens to safety, group representatives and experts told the DCNF.

“I think it might become more of a standard for conflict areas where a lot of Americans are and there’s a difficulty getting out,” Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East and retired CIA paramilitary operations officer, who also worked on Afghanistan evacuations, told the DCNF. “In Afghanistan, it was a matter of ones personal integrity to keep our word.”

Volunteer-enabled evacuations have taken place in Sudan and Ukraine since the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. In Israel, the circumstances were different; there was no army overrunning the country despite Hamas’ initial invasion and flights out, though limited, were still available.

In Gaza, “the ability to get people out was so contingent diplomacy that only the U.S. government and the Israeli government in official channels could engage in,” a State Department official with knowledge of the matter told the DCNF. “I don’t think the groups really were able to play the same kind of role in the situation that they were in the past.”

If the situation further deteriorates — if sparks on the northern border spiral into a full-on war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, for example — they will play an important supplemental role in arranging transportation for Americans to evacuate them from danger, Mulroy predicted.

“Should we have to do this? I don’t think so. Should there be a need for us to do this? I also don’t think so. But we do have to do it,” Tim Kennedy, a U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant and sniper, told the DCNF.

Kennedy is co-founder of Save Our Allies (SOA), an organization that originated during the Afghanistan withdrawal to rescue members of the Afghan security forces who partnered with the U.S. military and received promises of safety in America. SOA and another veteran-run organization, the Special Operations Association of America (SOAA), worked together at times to evacuate Americans from Israel.

Both groups describe themselves as nonpartisan and have active duty military members on their boards, their websites show. They fill in gaps where the U.S. government cannot operate, and Washington did not recruit or pay them to carry out humanitarian and rescue activities, group leaders and experts told the DCNF. The U.S. has not deployed special operations units in Israel for rescue and recovery or combat operations.

“That would fall into the purview of different organizations that have paramilitary units that are able to do that. There’s no Title 10 money — Congress hasn’t said we’re going to authorize the use of these types of groups to go and do this thing,” Kennedy told the DCNF.

“It falls into into a gray zone, that gray zone is a gap and that gap is where Americans effectively are trapped,” he added. “Not that I want to go into every war zone, but when it comes to Americans, I cannot stand by and let horrific things happen to Americans or our allies.”

Kennedy said one of his advantages was his ability to leverage contacts in defense contracting firms, the State Department and non-governmental organizations built up during his career in the military. In addition, SOA manages ground teams who do the footwork of helping Americans — performing route reconnaissance, filling out paperwork, securing transportation and moving people from one point to another without ambiguity.

“What we were doing was helping those people that were trapped there, get out. So that was in some instances as a liaison between the Department of State, the Egyptian government, the Israeli government [or] the NGO to the military, DOD or [Department of State] counterparts on the United States’ side to help streamline the evacuation of these people,” Kennedy said.

One example is Adam Friedrich, a pastor from Orange, California, who was on vacation in Israel with his elderly father. The two were visiting Jerusalem when the 3,000 Hamas terrorists attacked, and decided they needed to get home earlier than their planned leave date, he told the DCNF. Five airlines canceled flights out of Tel Aviv on them, and by that time Friedrich had maxed out his credit card.

The State Department told Friedrich, like other U.S. citizens wishing to get home, to “put your name on a list, and we’ll get in touch with you,” he told the DCNF.

The State Department relies on sending warnings to U.S. citizens in crisis zones for ensuring their safety as the situation heats up. It has warned U.S. citizens against traveling to Israel, Lebanon and Iraq since the Oct. 7 attacks and subsequent escalation in hostilities involving anti-U.S. entities in the region.

In the worst cases, when no commercial transportation is available, the State Department might help Americans identify and potentially arrange options, but only if the agency has embassy personnel on the ground to do so, according to a Q&A on the agency’s travel website.

But, a U.S. government evacuation of roughly half a million U.S. citizens is effectively a nonstarter, Mulroy explained to the DCNF. The massive military-assisted Afghanistan evacuation airlifted roughly 120,000 from a conflict zone.

SOA arranged transportation for Friedrich and his father to the small Haifa airport on the other side of the country, where the pastor just had to confirm his identity to easily bypass security guards and barricades, he told the DCNF. Another operative met the two, shepherding them on board a charter plane to Cyprus.

“That morning the operator has called me and he said, ‘Is this Adam Friedrich?’ I said, ‘Yes it is.’ He goes, ‘Today it’s going to be an easy day,’” Friedrich said.

“I mean, if you had known the amount of pressure and we’ve been trying to just trying to get a flight has been so difficult … to hear someone say it with that kind of confidence ….” he told the DCNF.

The two organizations also supported State Department and international efforts to extract U.S. citizens from Gaza, although the security and diplomatic situation restricted their impact, The Washington Post reported. Five women, all aid workers hunkered in a U.N. compound in Gaza since the unrelenting Israeli air bombardment commenced on Hamas targets in the strip, were among the first tranche of Americans allowed to exit through the Rafah border crossing.

The organizations taught the women survival techniques, sorted through rumors about ongoing efforts to secure their exit and made sure their names appeared on the list of those permitted entry into Egypt, one of the workers, Emily Callahan, told the Post.

SOA and SOAA dispatched teams of about two dozen total members to Israel and Egypt following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel based on those individuals prior experiences working with the countries, Alex Plitsas, an SOAA board member and spokesperson who helped coordinate evacuation efforts, told the Post.

They ended up evacuating about 240 U.S. citizens, David Cook, SOAA’s executive director, told the DCNF.

On Nov. 1, the five Americans and foreign NGO workers successfully made it out of Gaza, Plitsas said. “You’re scared to even move that anybody’s gonna see you that you could be attacked. Save Our Allies, what they did, not only in Israel, but what they also did in Afghanistan, and Ukraine and others is actually get those people and bring them to their port of exit,” Friedrich told the DCNF.

SOAA volunteers saw themselves as enablers for the United Nations, other NGOs and the local Palestinians who threaded pathway to the Rafah gate connecting southern Gaza and Egypt once the U.S. and international partners negotiated for its opening, the Post reported. They steered clear of tasks like hostage rescue operations that strayed too far into government territory.

“We are grateful for the assistance private organizations and NGOs provide to all individuals who are exiting Gaza including assisting U.S. citizens get to safety,” a State Department spokesperson told the DCNF.

The Agency coordinated with the Egyptian government and positioned embassy personnel outside the Rafah gate with chartered transportation for U.S. citizens, the spokesperson added.

“Unfortunately, this isn’t our first rodeo. Throughout the three crises that we’ve worked together on in the last … two years, you gain a lot of trust,” Cook said.

Cooperation with the host nation can also end up complicating State Department efforts further, Amy Mitchell, a former DoD and State Department senior official who is now founding partner at Kilo Alpha Strategies and on the advisory board of the Vandenberg Coalition, told the DCNF.

“These are not organizations or governments the U.S. has friendly relationships with. That is why we are seeing an uptick in these nonprofit groups — they can and do work in that gray space that the U.S. government cannot by utilizing civil society networks and organizations to rescue Americans and partners,” Mitchell said.

“State Department tacit approval allows the groups to continue their work,” she added. Involvement from volunteer organizations may not always be positive, experts cautioned, although the U.S. government appears postured to cooperate with the groups. Critics have pummeled the Biden administration for contributing to the circumstances that put Americans and allies in dangerous positions.

Kennedy also characterized the need for groups like his as “strategic level policy failures.” “The passion many have shown publicly again points to the failure we are currently experiencing at multiple levels of government ,and because of this administration’s foreign policy decisions,” Mitchell said.

If the organizations are “viewed as being antagonistic to the U.S. mission, that they’re probably gonna not be as helpful as they could be,” Mulroy told the DCNF.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Mossad and other intelligence agencies to hunt down and kill Hamas leaders in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar in the coming years once the current war in Gaza tapers off, the WSJ reported, citing Israeli officials. In the past, Israel has avoided targeting members of the Palestinian-based group in other countries to preclude diplomatic crises.

“I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are,” Netanyahu said in a televised address on Nov. 22, according to the WSJ.

Qatar has allowed Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, to run a political office from the capital of Doha for years, according to the WSJ. Qatar, Lebanon, Iran, Russia and Turkey have at times harbored Hamas terrorists.

And Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the leaders are living on “borrowed time,” the WSJ reported. “They are marked for death. The struggle is worldwide, both the terrorists in Gaza and those who fly in expensive planes.”

Israel is already carrying out operations to kill Hamas terrorist leaders living in Gaza while the war goes on, according to the WSJ. Plans on how to target leaders elsewhere around the globe initiated shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks, with Israel’s stated intention to prevent Hamas from ever staging a repeat.

However, some Israeli officials want to keep the plan a secret, according to the WSJ. They also debated whether to begin the assassinations immediately, but refrained from taking out Hamas militants in Qatar for fear it would close a door for the emirate to mediate hostage releases with Hamas.

Mossad head David Barnea met with CIA Director William Burns in Doha on Tuesday for discussions on a ceasefire extension and the freeing of additional hostages.

Some assassinations can at times violate international law, although that has not stopped many countries from carrying out targeted killings and weathering the international consternation that follows, according to the WSJ.

Israel’s intelligence forces have a storied history of clandestine operations to eliminate human targets for decades.

Netanyahu oversaw a botched assassination attempt against Hamas head Khaled Meshaal in Jordan that resulted in the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the group’s spiritual leader.

An Israeli government spokesperson did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. The Mossad could not be reached for comment.

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Hovanic, 64, of Sharpsburg, Georgia, was arrested on suspicion of pandering, according to a press release the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office provided to the DCNF. Eva Tedder, administrator for the sheriff’s office, said Hovanic told the jail staff he works for the Department of Defense (DOD) located in Peachtree City, Georgia, where the Department of Defense Education Activity’s (DODEA) Americas division is located, according to the agency’s website.

A booking photo of Hovanic, which the Coweta County sheriff’s office shared with the DCNF, shows a man who closely resembles the man in DODEA Americas Chief of Staff Stephen Hovanic’s biography on the agency’s website. Photos of both men show a distinctive scar across the chin.

The biography also states that Hovanic lives in Sharpsburg, Georgia.

Hovanic was one of more than two dozen arrests over a two-day operation meant to locate victims of human trafficking, the Newnan Times-Herald reported. Six women, identified as victims of human trafficking, were rescued in the operation, which saw arrests on charges of pandering, drug possession, prostitution and pimping, according to the press release.

DODEA Americas and Hovanic did not respond to calls and emailed requests for comment.

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Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria have attempted at least 46 drone and rocket attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in the region after promising escalation in response to U.S. support for Israel’s war against Hamas. Sunday’s strikes are the second in one week and third round overall since the ramp-up in attacks on U.S. troops began on Oct. 17, although U.S. retaliation has not mitigated attacks from Iran’s proxy forces thus far.

“U.S. military forces conducted precision strikes today on facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-affiliated groups in response to continued attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria,” Austin said in the statement Sunday. “The strikes were conducted against a training facility and a safe house near the cities of Abu Kamal and Mayadin, respectively.”

Local media and security researchers reported casualties at the site of the strikes. The reports could not be immediately confirmed.

“The President has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and he directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests,” Austin said in the statement.

At least 56 U.S. troops reported injuries as a result of the attacks and since returned to duty, the Pentagon has said. Some of the injuries included traumatic brain injury.

DOD just released footage of Nov. 8 strikes on IRGC weapons depot. pic.twitter.com/45FqIrEUE2

— Micaela Burrow (@micaela_burrow) November 9, 2023

Iranian-backed militias in the Middle East hope to draw the U.S. into a wider conflict, the Pentagon says.

The Biden administration previously said its retaliatory strikes would deter Iran-backed militias from attacking further.

“We want to make sure that we can contain this conflict to Israel and Hamas. We are not and have not seen this conflict widen beyond that region, beyond Israel,” Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said on Nov. 9. “It’s important to remember that we are sending a message and that that message has been received.”

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